Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Emotion
Message-ID: <962@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 88 15:04:29 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2100@phred.UUCP> <2103@phred.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 62

In article <2103@phred.UUCP> daveh@phred.UUCP (Dave Hampton) writes:
>>   I have heard suggestions that every (almost every?) action is 
>> associated with a particular emotional feeling.  Certainly such 
>> concepts as pleasure and pain can be applied to most animals,
>> especially the higher ones.
>
>  I agree.  According to the (poor) definitions that I have found, emotion
>results when a cognitive drive towards some definite object is either
>frustrated or satisfied.  Since this definition requires both self-
>awareness of desire and perceptual awareness of an object, it seems
>to me that the presence of emotions can serve as a marker for conscious
>self-awareness.  

I disagree, and assert that I can have unconscious or at least
subconscious emotions (not denying that emotion is frequently (usually?)
associated with self-awareness).  For example, when I slip on the
stairs, I get a surge of adrenalin, and my emotional state instantly
changes to one of fear and exhiliration.  Now, when this happens, I am
typically self-aware, but not necessarily so.  Let's say that I was
thinking intently on some subject as I came down the stairs.  Then it
may take some fractions of a second after the adrenalin stimulation for
my attention to turn from what I was considering to considering my
peril.  Or, I doubt that people in uncontrollable rages are always
self-aware, but clearly emotional. Indeed, this is the insanity defense.

>  I prefer "taxis" to "tropism" in this context, but, in either case,
>I think that there is a qualitiative difference between emotions
>and tropism.  Tropic behavior is a blind response to environmental
>conditions:  a reflex in which the character of the response is
>completely determined by the character of the stimulus.  
>Emotional expression is not driven simply by environnmental
>conditions, but by how these circumstances relate to cognitive desires.

First, we always need to be very careful when using terms like
"completely determined." Very few things in nature are completely
determined.  And that's exactly my point: I don't doubt that the
simplest taxic reflex is normally determining, but suspect that very
quickly as we move up the phylogenetic tree in neural complexity, that
the organisms gains some small amount of freedom in their reflexive
responses.  Consider the octopus, a simple, but large, neural organism. 
I doubt that their courtship rituals are always identical, always
determined.  Strongly controlled, highly similar, yes, but the
difference between complete determinism and strong control is exactly my
argument on the quantitative difference between emotion and taxis.  Or,
do you really think the octopus is *self*-aware?

To conculde, I deny that your latter point is necessary, although it may
be common.  Consider (:-}) the height of sexual passion, battle-lust,
absolute depressive despair or grief.  .  .it seems these extreme
emotional states overwhelm our consciousness to the extent that our
self-awareness may indeed be temporarily absent.  During these peak
experiences, all we have "room" to be aware of is the emotion, and if
we're lucky, the object of the emotion. 

>     --- Dave Hampton
>Reply to:  uiucuxc!tikal!phred!daveh {Dave Hampton}

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, New York, but my opinions
| vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .